


A Carton of Dragons

by overgrownruins



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dragons, Fantasy, Found Family, Gen, LGBTQ Themes, Muslim Character, Non-binary character, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Swearing, a lot of random researched facts about reptiles, but like in a modern setting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-31 05:14:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17843150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/overgrownruins/pseuds/overgrownruins
Summary: Some days, a carton of regular chicken eggs will almost make you late for class. Some days, a carton of regular chicken eggs will cause you to fear for the fate of your car.And some days, a carton of regular chicken eggs will make you the proud new mom of a few, uh - dragons?





	A Carton of Dragons

**Author's Note:**

> Heya! This is a story I started writing for my creative writing class, based on the silly idea of a normal carton of eggs hatching into dragons. It's a tale of family, dragons, mishaps, and not a whole lot else.
> 
> Please let me know if there are any mistakes and leave a comment if you enjoy the story :)

Mom had always, always said to check the eggs at the store before you buy them.

And maybe it's a testament to how long Arsala's been away from home, but damn it all, she's a college student with too many classes and too little time. She snags the last half-dozen carton of eggs and stuffs it into her cart, without even a cursory peek to make sure none are cracked. The watch on her wrist reads 10:17 when she glances at it. Damn, damn, triple damn. Only thirteen minutes to make it through the check-out lanes, across the campus, and into her seat before Professor Higurashi walks in. Taking the morning biodiversity class is turning out to be the worst decision of her life (right after choosing to live outside the dorms and punching Aaleyah in third grade). Her only consolation is that the frigid science professor can't possibly hate her any more than he already does. Still, she doesn't relish the idea of his icy lectures, so she pushes her cart through the aisles as quickly as is socially acceptable in a grocery store - which is, admittedly, little more than a very light jog. The check-out lanes are backed up by the time she reaches them, of course.

It takes far too long to move through the line, despite the few groceries she's able to buy with her meager paycheck. Behind her, another student fidgets and checks his phone, clearly also about to be late for class. The woman ahead of her, someone she recognizes as her first year trigonometry professor, is kicking up a fuss about the price of a gallon of milk, of all things. Arsala squeezes through the tiny space between the aisle and her cart to try and help the panicking cashier. The problem is settled fairly quickly when the woman realizes that she'd misread the price label, as she's forgotten her glasses. She flushes and utters a low apology to the cashier, but when Arsala turns back to her own cart, it's too late. The student behind her has placed his own items on the conveyor while she wasn't looking. He looks away guiltily, but doesn't say anything. She irritated, but all's fair on a college campus, she supposes. Instead of yelling, like she wants to, she settles for trying to vaporize him with her glare as she loads her things onto the conveyor behind his. Precious minutes later, she's tossing her groceries into the car, grimacing as the bag with the bread and eggs lands a little harder than intended. But she’d rather have squished sandwiches than more disapproval from Higurashi. With that thought in mind, she slams the trunk door, throws herself into the driver’s seat, and wishes her car was capable of flying as she pulls out of the parking lot and into morning traffic.

✽✽✽

Higurashi may be a prickly professor, and his views on punctuality a bit extreme, but his cold voice is intelligent and interesting while lecturing - crisp, cutting through the normally inattentive classroom atmosphere like silver. It's easy to get sucked into the topic he's presenting, and this, combined with a healthy amount of fear of the keen professor, keeps Arsala's head down and pencil on her paper, scrawling down notes. Today the subject is a broad look at the biology of reptiles, particularly lizards. They make good companions, he says, because of their clean nature. They're hypoallergenic, long-living, and only need to be fed every so often. She wants to have a few of her own someday, bearded dragons or leopard geckos or some other type of cold-blooded creature.

"As many of you know, I should hope, most reptiles lay eggs," he intones coolly, "The few exceptions include vipers, skinks and true chameleons. They give birth to live young. The majority, however, lay eggs in warm climates, nesting in trees or burying them in sand. Unlike the eggs you probably have in your refrigerators, these need to be kept warm, to preserve the young inside."

It takes a few minutes for the neurons in her brain to reach the right conclusion, but Arsala suddenly fumbles her pencil at the realization. The eggs. The eggs crammed into the trunk of her car, sitting on a side-street for an hour, underneath the heat of a summer sun. Her mind starts racing, trying to remember if eggs needed to be kept cold or not. She thinks she may have read an article somewhere that claimed eggs could be kept at room temperature, but that might have been only applicable to England. Something about how eggs aren't power-washed in European countries, so they they don't lose their protective layers, or something to that effect. This is California though, and isn't everything super organic and non-processed here, or is - that might just be a stereotype? There's probably a way to check on the carton, some kind of label...but wait, no, it's not like she can run out and check in the middle of class. She supposes she can only wait and desperately hope that the car doesn't smell horribly of rotten eggs when she returns. Will they even smell bad, or will they just be riddled with nasty bacteria? Regardless, she won't be eating them. That sounds exactly like the kind of decision to add to her list of 'bad choices'.

She groans internally. What a terrible thing to remember halfway into a two hour long lecture. She wants to check her phone, but already knows it’s useless. She’d forgotten to charge it while she slept last night, and it’d already died. In her mind, she can already hear Tove snarking at her for the inferior quality of her cellular device, or whatever. She knows she should’ve taken them up on their offer to upgrade her battery last week, but the idea of letting her gremlin of a friend get their fingers into her stuff seemed like a bad choice. Still does, actually.

She tunes back in to the lecture, quickly scanning the page of her table-mate to check that she hasn’t missed too much while in the midst of her tiny internal meltdown. Thankfully, it seems the only thing she’s missed is a small tangent on the difference between bird and reptile eggs, which she’d already read about in the textbook. Her brain catches up with what Higurashi is saying just in time to start the next section of notes.

“This is what we call a candling flashlight, which is used to check on the fertility and development of eggs. By shining the light from this end,” he says, holding up a silver pen-looking device and pointing to its tapered tip, “into the side of an egg, while in a dark room, we can tell if any offspring are growing inside. If you would deign to bring your attention to the screen, I’ll display some of the stages.”

He turns on a projector and gestures to it. There are five images on it, each labeled with their stage of development.

“First, we have a completely transparent egg. Note the lack of color to it. This egg is likely infertile, and will not produce a hatchling. The next, as you can see, has some faint veins around the edges, and a bit of a pink glow. This is a fertile egg, early in its growing phase. The third has more veins and a definite shadow, which means the offspring is on the right track. It grows over the fourth stage too, until it reaches the fifth phase of development. At this point, you can’t see through the egg at all, as the offspring has filled the egg completely. It’s now very close to hatching.”

With a condescending quirk of the brow, he asks, “Now, who thinks they can tell me what happens before and during the hatching process?”

Predictably, or at least it seems so to Arsala, no one offers a reply. Higurashi heaves a put-upon sigh, as if he’s been given the most unappreciative class he could possibly receive, and launches into explanation about the process.

“Unlike bird eggs, lizard eggs soften and begin to collapse when the egg is about to hatch. The shell deflates like a leaking balloon and develops a divot, until eventually, the hatchling itself is the only thing holding up the remains of the egg. The offspring will begin to tear its way out, using the egg tooth it has only during this stage of its life. The process can take a few hours, and the offspring will often stop to rest multiple times before the head even begins to emerge.”

The class continues without too many more startling revelations, and the whole egg situation has almost escaped her mind by the time class has concluded. Almost. The sharp clack of straightening papers on a wooden desk rings out through the room at precisely 12:30, as Higurashi announces that the lecture is over. The reminder of Arsala’s dairy dilemma seeps back in, and with it, the sinking realization that it’s a problem she has to take care of on her own. Grumbling, she quickly gathers up her notes and shoves them into her backpack. The green bag is already over-flowing with disorganized papers and notebooks, so she has little choice but to carry the large biodiversity textbook in her arms. Murmuring apologies, she squeezes past the slower students, still talking to their friends and packing up. Then she’s out the door, down the hall, and flying down the steps of the science building, en route to the parking lot. The outside air is humid and hot, and she has to slow her light jog to a fast walk, as she can already feel sweat pooling on her neck. The temperature has been steadily rising over the afternoon and seems noticeably hotter than when she’d been outside a mere two hours ago. It doesn’t bode well for the eggs marinating in her trunk.

The passenger-side door of her old silver sedan – she doesn’t really know what model it is, and doesn’t really care – sticks a little as she tries to open it, which means the lock is probably jammed again. She slams the heel of her palm against the edge of the door a few times, and when she tries to open it again, it finally concedes. She heaves her bag into the car and sets it on the floor, then stacks the textbook on top of a few others resting on the grey seat. Making sure everything sits nicely and fiddling with her keys helps waste some time, but eventually, Arsala knows she has to face her scatter-brained mistake. Now that she’s out of class, she can make her sighs audible, and does so with relish as she closes the passenger door.

She pulls her phone out of her pocket one more time, hoping by some miracle it’s been restored, but no such luck. The device is stuffed back into her pocket, with her keys and extra tissues. The trunk door is oddly ominous, which does not help with the feeling of dread creeping up her spine. It would be just her luck that the eggs have spoiled beyond rotten, and that the smell would linger in her trunk for weeks and Tove would get such a kick out of it and she would never buy eggs again, ever. She subtly pulls the bottom edge of her hijab further up onto her chin, ready to use as a mask if need be. Dramatics aside, she has a sensitive nose, and has no intentions of sending herself into a coughing fit because of her own stupidity.

Cautiously, she pulls up the trunk door, bracing herself for…well, she’s not sure exactly what, but probably the stench of true death and fear (at least she thinks that’s what rotten eggs smell like). After a full minute of cringing dramatically an arm’s length away from the foreboding trunk, she finally dares to move her face closer and take a peek inside. It’s suspiciously innocent, actually. The groceries are mostly where she left them, sans the slight abuse they might have suffered in her drive to class. The eggs sit in their half-open plastic bag, with the slightly squished bread, completely inconspicuous. Again, she doesn’t know what she’s expecting – it’s not like the eggs will mutate and turn into some horrible monstrosity that will try to eat her – yet still, the scene feels too normal, deceptively normal. It’s like walking into a room that seems empty, even though you know from the silence alone that one of your friends is hiding in the closet, waiting to jump out. Something isn’t right here. She’s just not quite sure what it is. And it’s kind of an odd feeling to have, when looking at such a simple scene. It makes her terribly uneasy. Still, she’ll have to check the eggs eventually, and sooner is probably better than later. No time like the present, as they say. Before she can convince herself otherwise, she scoops up the small carton, sends up a tiny prayer, and opens the top with a scratchy ‘pop’. Then promptly drops the container in surprise.

Fortunately, she’s holding the carton low and away from her body, so it simply falls harmlessly onto the other groceries. Unfortunately, it does nothing to help her understand what she sees. Instead of normal, white, uniformly shaped chicken eggs, there are six brilliantly colored shells, gleaming up at her from the trunk.

None are any bigger than the eggs she thought she had purchased, but two are significantly smaller, and another looks slightly misshapen. Confusion washes over her in waves. Despite the earlier lecture, she can’t recognize a single egg as being from any species she knows, avian or otherwise. One of the smaller eggs is iridescent and silvery, shimmering faintly with hues of purple and blue. Three have a creamy off-white base, although their markings are unlike anything she’s ever seen. The first has vibrant purple streaks curling up its sides, rising up like smoke, and is covered in golden flecks. The second and third are a bit less flamboyant, though still strange, sporting rusty orange spots and soft lavender tiger stripes respectively. The last two look completely foreign. One is blue from top to bottom, starting with a deep navy, and fading to a powdery pastel blue. The other’s texture looks peculiar and rough, like sandpaper, and its color is a pale teal. All are, admittedly, quite artistic. And frankly ridiculous. Arsala is certain that the only explanation for them is an elaborate prank, probably executed by some fine arts major with too much time on their hands. The little eccentricities are actually just painted eggs, or rocks, or sculptures, or, or – just something not real.

Except when she gently prods one with her finger, it’s warm, far warmer than the oppressive summer air.

✽✽✽

The lights in Arsala’s apartment flicker on without protest – the walls are crappy and the rent is cheap, but at least the electricity works here, as does the water. Some of the flats her friends are staying in are barely livable. Hers, unlike many of theirs, has the added bonus of air-conditioning. She revels in the sweet, cooled air fanning her face as she steps inside. The door is nudged closed with her foot, one hand being occupied with all her grocery bags, and the other reserved entirely for holding the eggs. She’d left her backpack and textbooks in the car, since she’ll be attending a class later in the evening anyways. Gently, she sets the load down on the tiny coffee table, a moving-away gift from her grandfather. She’ll deal with the groceries in a moment, but for now, she thinks a quick glass of water is in high order.

From the bland wooden cabinets in her kitchen she pulls a plastic cup, bright yellow and clearly made for children, perfect for a destitute young college student. She places it in the sink’s basin and turns the cold water on fully. While the refreshing sound of water running fills the room, she tugs the edges of her hijab away from her sweaty face and unbuttons her sweater. California during the summer is not exactly a prime location for her preferred attire. Still, it’s better than living in the middle of absolutely nowhere, also known as Iowa, like the rest of her family does. She misses them a bit, having grown up surrounded by brothers and cousins and crazy aunts. But it’s good to get away from all of that for a while, she thinks, turning off the stream of the sink so it doesn’t overflow the cup. A little bit of independence is a good learning opportunity.

The first sip of water is cooling and delicious, as is the second. The third is a little less so, considering she takes too big of a gulp and chokes on it, which she figures is probably par for the course in her life. Her coughs and hacks follow her all the way back into the small living room, where she slumps to the ground between the coffee table and her dusty couch with her legs crossed. She pushes aside a few grocery bags to make room for her cup and sets it down. Okay. With the coughs finally subsiding, she decides she’s a little more ready now to deal with the whole egg situation. She removes her sweater the rest of the way and curls it into a little nest on top of the olive green throw pillow she snagged from the sofa behind her, and once it’s arranged to her liking, she gives it a satisfied pat and sets it down next to her right knee. Then she reaches for the egg carton and opens it. One by one, she carefully picks up the eggs and sets them into the newly made sweater-nest. Now that she’s actually holding them, she can observe them a bit more closely, and observe them she does. For one thing, the shells aren’t just warm - they’re quite hot. Even after removing them from the sweltering trunk of her car, they’ve retained their heat, which cements her belief that they’re alive. Or rather, that they contain something alive. The orange spotted egg, in particular, feels significantly hotter than the rest. On the other hand, the lavender striped one feels cooler and lighter, and upon closer inspection, looks a bit paler than it did earlier. It could just be the lighting, but Arsala can’t help the little bubble of concern that rises.

She still doesn’t know exactly what species they’re supposed to be, or if they’re even birds. After the initial startling discovery, she’d tried to locate Professor Higurashi to ask him, but some of the remaining students had told her that he’d left only a few minutes after concluding the lecture. Of course, the one time she was brave enough to ask him for help, he had wandered off to who knows where. Typical. It’s up to her, then, to figure this issue out for herself. She’ll try checking the internet later (which reminds her, she needs to charge her phone), but she doesn’t have high hopes for that. What she does want to try, however, is the little lighting trick Higurashi had described earlier. It won’t magically reveal the species, but at least she’ll know how far along the colorful eggs are. Although she doesn’t own a fancy candling light, she thinks a regular flashlight might work well enough. She just hopes they’re close to hatching; some eggs take months to incubate, and she doesn’t think she could stand the suspense for that long.

Careful not to disturb the little nest, she stands and shuffles across the hardwood floors to the small supplies closet in the kitchen. It may actually be a pantry, as far as she can tell, but considering she rarely has time to cook, she doesn’t think that’s too important. Instead, it’s filled with cleaning supplies, extra toilet paper and paper towel, gallon trash bags, and random nick-knacks gifted to her that she hasn’t quite figured out what to do with, but doesn’t want to outright get rid of. And up high sits a mini flashlight, ready for use. She plucks it off the shelf, only standing on her tiptoes a little bit. She tucks it under her arm so she can scoop up the sweater-nest with both hands, and moves the delicate cargo to the bathroom, the only room without any windows. Anywhere else in the house would be too bright at this time of day, she figures. The lights stay on while she sets the nest onto the counter, shuts the door, and clicks on the flashlight. The small iridescent egg is first, and once she has it firmly in between her pointer finger and thumb, she uses the hand holding the flashlight to flick off the light. The bathroom is plunged into shadows, ominous and kind of creepy, with the only light source being her little makeshift egg candler. It’s easier to ignore the shifting forms on the walls as she moves the light if she focuses on the task at hand, so she does just that. She holds a tiny breath and shifts the flashlight behind the egg.

“Yes!” she whisper-yells excitedly, despite no risk of her voice waking the occupant. The egg is completely opaque, which, if Higurashi’s lecture information applies to the little creature, means it’s fairly close to hatching. There’s no telling exactly how close, whether it’s a few hours, and few days, or even another week or two, but it’s better than nothing.

Each egg gets the same treatment, one after the other. Three of the others are in the same condition as the iridescent one, tantalizingly close to their due date. The worrying lavender striped egg seems to be a bit behind the others in development, with a few veins still visible and the shape of the hatchling not quite obscuring the light yet. Arasla is unsure if this is a good sign or not, but nestles it back in with the others anyways. The final egg, the one with the orange markings and super high temperature, gives her a nasty surprise when she picks it up. Instead of a hard shell, her fingers are greeted with a velvety, squishy texture. With a flicker of surprise, and concern that she had damaged the egg, her hand flies to the light switch and fumbles to find the right one. She accidentally turns on the overhead vent fan twice before she manages to get the lights back on; they blind her momentarily and she blinks rapidly to clear her spotty vision. When she regains her eyesight, she quickly bends to level her face with the nest and observe the egg she’d tried to grab.

The surface has become slightly wrinkled, like silky fabric, and moisture shines on its surface. Worse, it has a dent in it, which her brain immediately categorizes as Not Okay. The eggs have been under her care for little more than a few hours, but the knowledge that there are living things inside has rapidly increased her attachment to them. Not a damn chance she’s letting one die because she did something stupid. Before she can start truly panicking, she takes a minute to try to figure out what could have made the egg so delicate all of a sudden. It had been perfectly solid when she was handling it in the living room, like the others, so what changed? She looks at it from every angle, checks to see if the others are displaying any similar problems, even briefly leaves the bathroom to plug in her phone with the intent of finally doing some research. The charger is hooked into an outlet in her bedroom, so she sits and taps her fingers impatiently on the edge of her bed while she waits for it to boot up. It’s potentially the absolute worst place to have to wait for anything. The carpet is plain white and scratchy beneath her bare feet, and the ugly puke yellow walls mock her as the phone stubbornly refuses to light up. Despite being the room she’s slept in for close to three years now, it still manages to make her feel distinctly uncomfortable in a way that the rest of the apartment seems to have no problem avoiding. It’s probably the color. The room could really stand a nice new paint job, she thinks idly, in a nice pale grey or powder blue. Or maybe she could convince the landlord to just tear the whole wall down and start again, let it collapse on itself so a new, better wall could emerge and – oh. Oh. Yet again, her mind snaps back to the class lecture.

Lizard eggs soften and begin to collapse when the egg is about to hatch. As in, really about to hatch. So maybe the eggs aren’t from birds, like she’d initially suspected due to their hard shells, and are actually reptilian? She hops off the bed and out of the awful bedroom, sliding back into the bathroom. It doesn’t make much sense that the egg’s condition would change in such a short amount of time, but that doesn’t really matter at this point. When she checks the little orange spotted egg again, it truly does seem to fit the description Higurashi had provided. Relief that she hadn’t hurt the little hatchling mixes with a building excitement. It seems she’d get to meet whatever it was sooner than expected. She gathers up the nest carefully once again and moves it back to the living room, where she sets it down on the couch and then opens up the drapes fully to allow sunlight to warm the room. The air-conditioning gets cranked down a few notches, to allow a warm environment for whatever decides to pop its head out of the little shell. Finally, she revisits the bedroom to grab a handful of blankets, the charger, and the phone, which has finally come back to life. Plugging in the phone again and encasing herself in a mountain of blankets, Arsala readies herself for the long wait.

✽✽✽

Blearily, Arsala scrubs at her face, knocking her already askew glasses to the floor in the process. She feels over-warm and oddly sweaty, there’s a crick in her neck, and she can feel the imprint of the couch’s fabric on her cheek. She’d fallen asleep. With all the grace of a drunken toddler, she kicks the blankets away from her body and blindly grasps for her phone. Its light is searing in the dark of the room, but she sticks it right in her face right in it anyways, as she can hardly see her own nose without her glasses. The bright numbers read 11:43 PM. Ah. That would be why there’s no more sun. It seems she’s missed the entirety of her evening class, but she has a few friends in that class who she can steal notes from, so she’s not too concerned.

Standing on wobbly, sleepy legs, she makes her way to where she remembers the light switch to be, and after a few trips over the blankets tangling her feet, she eventually manages to get the lights on. With that problem taken care of, she stumbles back to the couch and picks up a black blob that she’s pretty certain is her glasses. Before she puts them back on, she paws at her face with the sleeve of her sweater, wiping away the ridiculous amount of moisture. It’s an excessive amount, and she wasn’t hot enough to sweat that much, she thinks, so where-? She adjusts her glasses and gets her answer almost immediately.

The orange egg is completely deflated around the shape of whatever is inside it, and is spewing steam like a kettle from a tiny slit in the side facing where she’d been napping. Tonight is the night, apparently, although the steam is a complete mystery at this point. Granted, the egg had been quite hot, so maybe this was normal for its species? Regardless, Arsala expects to be waiting for a little while longer before she gets to see the whole hatchling, if what Higurashi had said about how tiring the process is had been correct.

The little creature clearly disagrees, however, and as soon as she settles down next to egg again, it starts furiously nudging its nose through, like it was merely waiting for her to be witness. The little snout is a pale orange-yellow, with a streak of white down its center and orange spots spreading from the stripe. The rest of the head then squirms out, revealing piercing black eyes and two small white horns, still soft and dull. A yellow leg wiggles out next, its tiny white claws scrabbling for purchase on the sweater nest. The hatchling pauses for a moment. She thinks it may be some kind of desert horned lizard, as she watches it seemingly take a moment to catch its breath.

Then she squawks and jumps back in surprise as the rest of the egg splits open in a violent release of steam directly in her face. Her vision blurs, and she looks away for a moment to wipe the condensation off her glasses. Looking back nearly gives her a heart attack.

The hatchling is now completely exposed, and is shaking out the thin membranes of its small but very eye-catching wings. Wings. Arsala shakes her head, looks again, shakes her head again, and looks one more time. Then gawks at the hatchling.

“What the fuck,” she says out loud, just because she can. This catches the creature’s attention, and it peers up at her with innocent, curious eyes, wings spread loosely at its sides.

The dragon opens its tiny jaws and chirps, “Hello!”


End file.
